My wife and I received an interesting invitation a few days ago. A friend asked if we had anywhere to go for Easter.
I knew what she meant. Holidays of all sorts in America provide an excuse to eat, and she was offering an opportunity to join her family for Easter dinner. I enjoy a good feast as much as anyone, and I didn’t infer any deeper meaning beneath her kindness.
However, my friend’s casual question leads me to examine my own approach to holy week. I want Easter to mean something more substantial than ham and jell-o salad.
“Do you have anywhere to go for Easter?”
Far many years I really didn’t have a meaningful place for Easter. I knew all about colored eggs and jellybeans and Easter baskets. I enjoyed brightly colored dresses and cute bunnies. I consumed a lot of ham and scalloped potatoes. But this weekend wasn’t substantially different from any other family gathering.
Now I know better. I know that this season leads to the cross, to an unimaginable act of self-sacrificial love.
Your attitude should be the same as that of Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be grasped, but made himself nothing, taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness.
And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself and became obedient to death—even death on a cross! (Philippians 2: 5-8)
Jesus emptied himself, left the glory of heaven behind, and became a lowly servant. He lived a life of perfect obedience and took upon His shoulders the sins of the entire creation. He knowingly walked a path that took Him to a tortuous death He didn’t deserve.
“Do you have anywhere to go for Easter?” Yes, I do. I need to go to the foot of the cross.
But that can’t be my only Easter destination. If death is the meaning of Holy Week, then the message of Jesus is nonsense. I need to follow Christ to another location.
The angel said to the women, “Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come and see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: ‘He has risen from the dead and is going ahead of you into Galilee. There you will see him.’ Now I have told you.” (Matthew 28: 5-7)
In Luke 24, the angel asks a powerful, penetrating question. “Why do you look for the living among the dead?”
“Do you have anywhere to go for Easter?” Yes. I’m going to the empty tomb, to set aside the sadness and guilt and horror of the cross. I’m going to answer the angel’s challenge to me by recalling the rest of his proclamation: He is not here; he has risen!
My friend’s kind invitation reminds me that I do indeed have somewhere to go for Easter. I need to stop looking for the living among the dead, to go from the cross and the empty tomb and re-discover the risen Savior who lives in every person.
Along the way, I’ll probably also encounter some ham as well.
Where are you going for Easter?
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